Experts in microbiology, vaccinology and primary care They have highlighted today that the future of covid-19 is uncertain “but it aims to become seasonal”, which will require raising awareness among the population about the need for a schedule of “up-to-date immunizations”as with the flu, and do away with the “booster dose” concept that has led to pandemic fatigue.
This has been revealed during a conference in the Congress of Deputies for dissemination and reflection on the covid-19 control strategyan initiative launched at the request of the Spanish Societies of Family and Community Medicine and of Clinical Microbiology and Infectious Diseases.
Esther Redondo, responsible for Vaccines of the Infections, Migrants, Vaccines and Preventive Activities of Primary Care Group (IMVAP) of the SEMERGEN medical society, has stated that at this time there are no clear concepts about the evolution of the virus, but with all probability aims to seasonalizeso it will be necessary to establish in society an autumn-winter calendar of vaccination aimed mainly at the elderly and vulnerable.
He has appealed to fight the pandemic fatigue and to the vaccination satiety that produces talk of “the third, fourth, fifth or sixth dose” to raise awareness about an “updated vaccine” for the variants or subvariants that are circulating at all times since reinfections by the virus will continue to occur.
Redondo has lamented the little success of the vaccination campaign with the bivalent dose (the one adapted to omicron and its subvariants) with a territorial disparity “that must be studied”: while in Galicia among those over 59 it reaches 70%, in other communities such as the Balearic Islands or the Canary Islands it does not reach 40% and drops to 20% in Ceuta or Melilla.
Likewise, the specialist recalled that covid-19 will continue to strain the health system with hospitalizations, deaths, worsening of pathologies and an increase in sequelae due to infection (pulmonary, cardiac, renal and neurological, the most frequent) and has warned that if the society loses its fear of a virus due to the feeling of protection from previous vaccines, it will re-emerge.
Rafael Cantón, head of Microbiology at the Ramón y Cajal Hospital, explained that omicron is “like an alphabet soup”, which is why he sees it necessary for the virus sequencing be “a routine reality for public health reasons in all laboratories”.
He has assured that there are still “gaps” for the medical and scientific community to understand the behavior of Sars-cov-2, and the covid-19 infection, given “the complexity of the protein genome” of the virus and has appealed for a “multidisciplinary” response with surveillance, study and early detection to be able to “hurry up” vaccines that improve the future immune response.
Among other speakers, the head of the Emergency Unit of the San Carlos Clinical Hospital, Juan González del Castillo, has participated, who also believes it is necessary to increase the sequencing of Sars-cov-2 and the detection tests in health centers to “organize the flow of patients”.
González, like other experts who have participated in the conference, have pointed out that the covid-19 symptoms have changed and that many patients do not go to the emergency room due to symptoms of infection, but rather due to a “decompensation of their underlying pathology”, which can cause a prolonged hospitalization that leads to a patient who lived independently becoming chronic and dependent.
